In thrall to the City of Light

Paris may be known as the City of Light, but in Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932, it serves as the backdrop for some of the darkest events of human history—and for an exhilarating new novel from writer Francine Prose.

Blurring the line between reality and imagination

Francine Prose has written more than 20 books, including the National Book Award finalist Blue Angel, so the term “breakout book” doesn’t really apply. But her new historical novel, Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932, is poised to become her biggest hit yet. Told from various perspectives, the novel pieces together the life of Lou Villars—auto racer, cross-dresser and eventual Nazi sympathizer—against the turbulent backdrop of Jazz Age Paris. We asked Prose a few questions about the new book. Read on to find out about her own double identity and why she writes for readers like herself.

Coming to the "new" America

There has been a lot written about the Bush and Cheney days, but rarely from such an amusing perspective as in Francine Prose’s My New American Life. In the novel, Lula, a 26-year-old Albanian living in New York City with an expiring tourist visa, finds work as a nanny for the son of a Wall Street executive. She mainly spends her days on the couch in the family’s suburban New Jersey...

Finding the real Anne Frank

Hers is a face recognized around the world, 65 years after her death in one of Hitler’s concentration camps. Because her picture survived, she stands for the faceless millions who were herded, stripped, whipped and forced into the gas chambers. Her personal struggle came to life in the journal she kept while her family hid in a cramped attic from the Nazi patrols.In Anne Frank: The Book,...

Audio Column by Sukey Howard

Francine Prose is extraordinarily savvy about our complex world, and her writer's radar picks up more than most. In her new novel, A Changed Man, performed with pitch-perfect deftness by Eric Conger, Prose takes on a hefty subject, but does it with a deceptively light touch. When Vincent, a young neo-Nazi (tattoos and all) presents himself to the dedicated folks at World Brotherhood Watch, a...

Well Read Column by Robert Weibezahl

Unlike some novelists, who take us into unfamiliar terrain, Francine Prose keeps readers firmly rooted in a contemporary America as recognizable as the evening news. But beneath the familiarity, Prose gets to the essence of what we ourselves might have been thinking but didn't quite have the facility or the courage to put into words. Her National Book Award finalist, Blue Angel, for...

A post-9/11 look at school security

A new recruit to the growing ranks of noted novelists tackling the young adult genre, best-selling author Francine Prose picks a timely topic: the tradeoff between security measures and personal freedom, particularly as they pertain to the daily routines of high school. It occurred to her post-9/11, as she notes in a foreword, that "the problematic aspects of our new lives baggage...

The muses that inspired men of genius

If you ever chuckled when you heard the phrase battle of the sexes," thinking to yourself, that's no battle, child," Francine Prose's book might make you reconsider. In The Lives of the Muses, Prose explores nine of the most tortured, devious relationships known to art and science. But instead of focusing on the famed artist in each couple, she looks at his lover, spouse or eroticized friend...

Sorrow's springs

"People laughed!" Prose exclaims during a call to the Greenwich Village home she shares with her husband, the artist Howard Michels. Prose speaks in energetic, good-humored bursts of thought. "I was surprised. Because the book seems to me so grim. But then, apparently, it is not. So I'm delighted, really."